Mario Wallenda, Grandson Of High-wire Legend

SARASOTA, Fla. — Mario B. Wallenda, grandson of high-wire legend Karl Wallenda, died of AIDS on Friday at his Sarasota home. He was 36.

His mother, Carla, said her son wanted the cause of his death made public.

"We all felt that so many people think it's somebody else's disease," she said. "Everybody should be aware. It's right around in all of the nice neighborhoods. People should be aware that it's here."

Carla Wallenda said her son tested positive for the HIV virus in July 1990 when he collapsed after a performance in Canada.

She said he did not know when or where he contracted AIDS, but he told her that he had practiced unsafe sex several times while living in Reno, Nev., for two years during the mid-1980s.

"He'd been running around, partying and everything," she said.

While most members of the Sarasota-based Wallendas were best known for walking the tightrope and building human pyramids, Mario Wallenda's specialty was riding his motorcycle inside a large steel-mesh globe perched on a high wire.

The acted was billed as "The Globe of Death."

Like other Wallendas, Mario Wallenda learned to walk the tightrope by age 3. But he preferred riding the globe because it was rarely done in circus acts.

"Nobody had done that in a long time," Carla Wallenda said. "He was the only one in the family that had enough guts to ride upside down in a motorcycle."

Mr. Wallenda also walked the tightrope with his grandfather, who died in a fall from a tightrope in 1978 in Puerto Rico.